The FAA’s recent ruling on small drones and remote control aircraft got me thinking about the pair of R/C helicopters I have down in my basement. Overly ambitious gifts for my two sons (aged 5 and 8) from their grandmother, the helos carry age 14+ labels, so I regretfully planned to store them away for a couple of years. Yet, that .55 pound weight limit for required registration began to gnaw at me. Would they someday be flying their helicopters in the park and have an FAA policy enforcement team descend on them, confiscate the toy choppers and haul them away? According to the agency’s website, “The FAA may assess civil penalties up to $27,500. Criminal penalties include fines of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment for up to three years.” Wishing to avoid that fate, I decided to unpack one of them, weigh it and if necessary complete the registration process. According to our company postage scale, the helicopter weighed in at 8.1 ounces, beefier than I thought, and a scant four one-hundredths of a pound under the proscribed limit for registration. In a way I was a little disappointed that I did not have to register my very own aircraft and get my very own N-number.
There has been much negativity regarding the FAA’s announced plan, but it is clear the agency has found itself way behind the curve regarding the drone invasion and is desperately trying to catch up. Numbers vary as to how many of these things of varying size and capabilities will find themselves under Christmas trees across the country this year, ranging conservatively from several hundred thousand to more than a million, and many feel it is only a matter of time before one of them gets sucked up into a jet engine, or crashes through a cockpit windshield.
A lifelong aviation enthusiast who joined AIN in 2007, Curt came to the publication from the broadcast industry where he was a national science and technology television reporter and producer. He writes on the FBO field, aviation finance, and sustainable aviation and occasionally contributes to AIN sister publication Business Jet Traveler. Curt was a member of the AINtv reporting staff that won the 2008 Aerospace Journalist of the Year award for Best Airshow Daily. That same year, he was a finalist for another AJOYA award. He earned an AJOYA for Best Business Aviation Submission in 2018 and was a finalist in that category in 2021. He received the National Air Transportation Association’s Aviation Journalist Award in 2012 and won a Pegasus Sapphire Business Aviation Award for outstanding journalism in 2021.
Before joining AIN, Curt worked with Consumer Reports’ television division, CRTV, and for several local television news staffs. An honors graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University in 1995. Curt lives in New York State with his wife and two young sons.
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